Tag Archives: The Seven Deadly Sins

Maliken Grimm stood in his cavernous, billowing tent at the base of the magma fields and surveyed the map of Caldavar. It was his personal map, and the only one like it in existence.

Jaru the Corrupted Disciple had offered it as a gift, spreading the expansive map before him and telling his Lord General, “I ordered the shamans to create this for you, and they did not disappoint. The ink is derived from the blood of Amiteah the Empath, collected after a battle at the base of the Sefir Tree.” Jaru lifted the edge to show the underside. “And see here, my lord. The map is inked upon the hide of an Emerald Warden. Both have been imbued by the shamans with the tortured souls of warriors from the Fourth Clan of Man: the Scouts. They are compelled to see all, and report. Now, watch my lord.”

Maliken had smiled as the ink marking Legion and Hellbourne units faded, shifted, and grew as they moved through Caldavar. He focused on a blurry array of his soldiers along the river in Darkwood Vale, unmoving as a single line of Legion men approached.

“A patrol,” Jaru whispered.

“An ambush,” Maliken corrected.

They watched as the slashes denoting Hellbourne warriors sprang into sharp relief on the map, out of their concealment and into the flank of the Legion unit. One by one those round symbols glistened briefly as fresh blood, then seeped into the hide and vanished. The Hellbourne slashes lingered at the site of the massacre.

Jaru cleared his throat. “They are feeding, my lord.”

“Let them. They earned it.”

The map had been invaluable to Maliken, an advantage kept secure in his minimal kit as he prowled the front lines looking for gaps in the Legion defenses. His Lord General’s tent was large, indeed, though the space was not for material things, but for assembling his subordinates and disseminating tactical orders in an efficient manner.

Efficiency, Maliken knew, was one of the attributes that set him before all others in the ways of warfare. If a thousand prisoners needed executing, there was no sense wasting manpower and sharp steel to entertain a bloodthirsty crowd, be they human or daemon. Simply drive the prisoners off a cliff by fire and spearpoint and let gravity do the work.

Now, he required an efficient manner of locating and assassinating this Blind Prophet and his Five Disciples who were causing such a ruckus. The fringes of his map rolled over the edges of his dining table, a slab of petrified wood cut from a bulging root of the World Tree, and he searched for a sign of them among the creeping, shifting ink.

Nothing.

Maliken sipped his bloodbroth and waited. He suspected these rumored “soldiers of Sol” possessed a magic that kept their location from him. Understandable, and respectable. But there was also no sign of the daemons he had sent to kill them.

He had dispatched Tressa the Succubus to lure his own flesh, Jeraziah, to his death. Maliken vaguely remembered when he had been human and how hot his blood had coursed after battle. If his son had a fraction of that passion in him, Tressa would make short work of it.

Now she was missing.

As was Vament the Torturer, who had been pulled so far into the Hellbourne fold he no longer knew his own name. Maliken placed him in his cave of horrors to wait for Tressa’s string of victims.

Now the map showed that cavern empty.

Also notable was the absence of Chronos, who had recently set upon a Legion encampment and scoured it from the map completely as Maliken watched. Fine work, indeed, but where was he now?

Maliken inspected every inch of the map and felt…not troubled, certainly.

Displeased.

He went so far as to doubt the accuracy of the infernal map. Perhaps the delirious shamans with their ridiculous bones and elixirs had been too intoxicated by the spirits to do a good job of it.

That suspicion grew when the Lord General glanced at his own location on the map. He traveled with no less than fifty elite guardsmen, and the map showed half of that.

No, less.

He scowled as the slashes surrounding his tent disappeared in groups until none remained.

“Damned shamans,” Maliken growled and strode to the heavy canvas flaps. He tore through them, furious at the conjurers but also with himself for relying on enchantments when his own eyes were all he could truly trust.

He blinked in the torchlight and wondered if even that was true. Arrayed before him were twelve Legion soldiers the likes of which he had never seen. They stood above the steaming corpses of his guards, their dazzling armor and weapons showing no rust or dents. Not even blood.

Yet it was the lack of something else that struck him hardest: fear.

These warriors were not afraid of him.

The man in the center stepped forward. He wore a hooded purple cloak, the edges made of burning feathers, and carried a double-bladed staff. This he stuck into the bloody soil, and with the same hand pulled a thick, ancient book from his satchel. He drew the hood away from his face and let it fall onto his shoulders.

“The Blind Prophet,” Maliken said.

Those white eyes stared through him. “Grimm.”

“Have you come to kill me?”

“Only part of you.”

The Lord General felt daemonic power stirring within his sword. It smelled battle, conquest. He studied each enemy before him, then scoffed. “You brought my son with you.”

“He brought me,” the Blind Prophet corrected.

“You can’t truly believe Virtue will overcome Sin. Not even in Sol’s best era could he compete with Greed, Lust, and Envy. Those led to Sloth, Wrath and Gluttony, each sin feeding the others until Pride brought the sinners before Sol for salvation. Your pathetic priests cleansed them, set them on the righteous path where they encountered War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death. This eroded their virtue until they fell again to Sin.”

Maliken chuckled.

“Virtue is temporary, blind man. It is a hobby. Sin is everlasting.”

“We know of Sin, Maliken. Your son embodied Pride itself, yet here he stands in the blessed armor of Omen, of the Fifth Clan of Men, from which you came.”

“And what is it that compels him to walk beneath that heavy armor? Virtue? Pride?” A sly grin pulled at Maliken’s lips. “From the thunder in his eyes, I daresay it is Wrath.”

Jeraziah stepped forward. “It is for Sol to determine your fate. I am simply his blade.”

“Keep telling yourself that, boy. Though it doesn’t get the bloodstains out any faster, does it?” Maliken rested his hand on the hilt of his cursed blade. “So. Shall we begin?”

One of the Virtues, a woman of soft beauty entwined with flowers, said, “We do not wish to harm you, Lord General.”

Maliken squinted. “Vament, is that you? This priest made you hang up your chains for landscaping, eh? And Chronos, time has not been good to you. Your lack of urgency will make you easy pickings. I feel sorry for both of you, but it is you, Tressa, who disappoints me most.”

The daemon he had once called Succubus did not flinch from his gaze.

“My body and spirit are whole now,” she said. “I no longer yearn for completion. Though I remember how many victims you set in my path, promising they would fill the void within me.”

Maliken cocked an eyebrow. “Did they not?”

“No. And now that I am whole, I wish the same for you. Despite how you used me.”

“I am more than whole,” Maliken said, patting his scabbard. “I call upon power that would incinerate any other man, wield it in ways that have brought Sol’s army to its knees.”

“That is where we fight best,” the Blind Prophet said “And you are certain that you are holding the sword? Or is the sword holding you?”

Maliken sighed. He was not afraid of these Disciples and Virtues, but he had never fought them before. The towering brutes Orbode and Temperance looked to be a handful in a melee, and the warrior called Diligence had the hard eyes of a relaxed killer.

Know your enemy, Maliken thought, before you seek to destroy him.

“It seems you are determined not to engage in battle.”

“Only as a last resort,” Jeraziah said. “It is Sol’s wish.”

Then Sol has wished you all to die here, Maliken thought as he pulled the tent flap aside. “I have been called the scourge of mankind, the Traitor King, and Maliken the Blood Drinker, among other names a priest should never hear. But never a bad host. Come, out of the night and away from these stinking corpses. See how long it takes before you arrive at your last resort.”

***

Maliken folded his Warden hide map and draped it over a half-filled sword rack, then took the high-backed chair at the head of the table. There were ample seats along the length for the Disciples and Virtues, but all chose to stand except for the Blind Prophet, who sat opposite Maliken at the far end of the massive table. The other Legion soldiers stood behind him, stone-faced with weapons at hand.

“Wine?” Maliken gestured at the smaller table near the canvas wall. “I have some barrels donated by a caravan trying to slip through Grimm’s Crossing. I cannot speak for its worth, but you’re welcome to it.”

“Donated?” Jeraziah said. “You mean you slaughtered them and took what they carried.”

The Blind Prophet ignored him. “The message is one you have not heard, nor one you would expect. I also feel it is vastly undeserved, but it is not up to me.”

Maliken’s interest piqued. “Are you here to surrender?”

Jeraziah drew his sword. The Virtue Diligence stepped forward and blocked his path, but Maliken was already on his feet with blade in hand.

“Let him come!” Spittle flew from his mouth as he roared. “Stand aside, wanderer, and give him his wish! To die, to finally join his mother so he may look upon her and see what he stole from me.”

The air in the tent grew thick and heavy, like an armory filled with the fumes of sapper’s mines—a single spark would begin a chain reaction of destruction that would leave no survivors. Father and son glared at each other, two kings brought to the brink of savagery, until Jeraziah slid the blade into its scabbard. Diligence stayed close, as did Temperance.

“I imagine the passing of your wife in childbirth has something to do with Sol’s message,” the Blind Prophet said. He nodded to himself and spoke softly. “As does your bewitching at the hands of the shapeshifter Sylvia. Perhaps you were not yourself when you chose to open the Scar and unleash the Second Corruption upon Newerth. When you chose to slaughter man, woman, child, and beast, with no regard for your people, your own children. Or your own soul.”

Maliken lay his cursed sword across the table and stood over it. “Out with it, old man. Speak the empty words of Sol so I may etch them on the tomb that will soon hold all of you.”

“It is only one word,” the Blind Prophet said. “Redemption.”

The Virtues and Disciples—Jeraziah in particular—expected Maliken to scoff yet again. They readied themselves for the inevitable onslaught from the fallen king, and were shocked when the daemon Lord General sank to his chair.

“Redemption?” he whispered. “For which of my sins?”

“Each and all,” the Blind Prophet said.

Maliken’s eyes darted around the tent, yet his guests could not see the ruinous past he replayed on the canvas walls. The past he had sworn he would never revisit, never regret, for to do so would render every tormented moment of his life moot.

He saw the carnage he brought upon his brothers and sisters when he used an iron fist to unite the Five Clans. The piles of carcasses during the Beast Bone Years. The primal urge to bash his newborn son upon the rocks when the priests told him his beloved wife, Andraste, had died giving birth. An urge he contained, yes, but the shame of its very existence haunted him.

He relived his fury and humiliation upon the realization his precocious daughter, Ophelia, was half shapeshifting nightmare, brought into the world by the ageless creature Sylvia. His years of madness and self-imposed exile as he searched tirelessly for a way to bring mankind back to his days of prominence and purity. To rid the world of conniving gods who ripped loved-ones away despite years of devotion as His chosen soldier. To eliminate the magical things which no man truly understood and could wreak unending havoc upon his life.

Maliken remembered that night within the cramped cottage miles from any village or road. He’d built it from timber and moss and dragged to it every book he could salvage or steal, pored through the pages until he closed the last leather-bound cover and realized there was only one solution.

There was no returning to what once was.

Indeed, what may have never been.

The only way was to start anew.

He visited his children in their dreams, called them to the clearing upon which he would implore them to sacrifice themselves and their armies. All of mankind, every Beast within the horde.

Starve the gods of men and nature and let them rot. Whatever rose from the ashes, let it follow a truer path than the inhabitants of Newerth.

Maliken recalled the moment when he realized his children had too much of him in their blood, too much of their mothers, to step willingly into the grave. It was also the moment he knew it was too late. The earth tore open and the daemons poured out to claim his soul and those he had summoned to the clearing.

His children survived that day, and many since. Maliken still believed scorching Newerth to its bedrock was the only solution.

After all he had done, what choice did he have?

None.

Until now.

Maliken brought his gaze back to the Blind Prophet, who said, “Your tears are true, son of Sol.”

Maliken touched his cheek and brought his fingertips away, marveling at the drops glistening upon them. “I have had no water in my body for decades.”

“Why would you? Water supports life. Welcome back, King Grimm.”

“What…what must I do to claim this redemption?”

“Simply choose to accept it,” the Blind Prophet said, “and walk forward in Sol’s light. Will you do this?”

Maliken searched the faces of the Virtues and Disciples for deceit and found none. His son, however…

“Jeraziah, why are you not happy? Your god has offered me a place at your side. Would you not accept me?”

Jeraziah’s jaw clenched. “Every soldier and citizen of the Legion has suffered because of you. They have endured years of hardship and staggering loss at the hands of your bloodthirsty armies. And now you’re given the chance to cleanse yourself of these sins as though they never occurred. My people will not tolerate this.”

“Understandable,” Maliken said. “But apparently…your god wills it. So where do you stand?”

“The same place I have always stood. At the forefront of my soldiers and citizens.”

Jeraziah was unmoved. “Don’t bother. I cannot foresee the day I will believe your atonement anything but a ruse.”

“A shame,” Maliken said. “But upon me, not you.” He turned to the Blind Prophet. “I accept this gift of Sol.”

The Blind Prophet did not hesitate. He opened the Grimoire of Power and read, “You relinquish the power bestowed upon you by daemonic forces?”

“Yes.”

“You forsake all Pride of what you once were, what you are, and what you may become?”

“I am ash in Sol’s hands. Let him form me as He sees fit.”

“Then bow, and arise as Humility, the final Virtue of Sol’s Heavens.”

The Blind Prophet spoke then in the tongue of Sol, and the Virtues and Disciples watched as Maliken Grimm clutched the edge of the table and gasped. The glowing runes on his flesh were mended and his gray, necrotic body was flushed with warm blood. A glowing symbol of the World Tree spread across his chest and he felt himself connect with the life that flows through all things.

Blessed armor formed over his feet and legs, chest and arms, and pauldrons grew from the shoulders into icons of devotion and respect for his children—Jeraziah’s stoic helm on his left, Ophelia’s bestial headdress on his right.

Pure white wings burst from his back and caressed the walls of the tent, drawing another gasp from Maliken and compelling the Virtues and Disciples to drop to a knee and bow their heads in recognition of Sol’s greatness.

All except Jeraziah, who remained standing, his hand on his sword hilt. “My eyes will not leave you, lest you choose that moment to reveal your true self.”

Maliken’s breath heaved with exhilaration. “I welcome your gaze, my son. For this is my true self, and it has missed you greatly.”

Jeraziah struggled to maintain his composure.

The Virtue Kindness said, “Go to him. He yearns for your forgiveness.”

Patience said, “His soul has waited long years to rejoin you.”

Even Diligence spoke. “All watches must come to an end. Stand down, King Jeraziah, and be with your father. Be his son.”

Jeraziah cuffed the tears from his cheeks, gazed upon the redeemed Maliken for a moment—Humility indeed—then turned and left the tent.

The Blind Prophet secured the Grimoire in his satchel and stood. “He will see the way of Sol, eventually. But only if you walk the path you have sworn to follow.”

“I can see no other,” Humility said. He lifted the heavy blade from the table and slid it into the wide scabbard on his hip. When he looked up he faced swords, warhammers, claws, and a massive whirling spiked ball and chain.

“You swore to forsake all things daemonic,” the Blind Prophet warned. “That blade was fed by your cursed soul and the blood of the Legion. Leave it behind.”

Humility patted the scabbard. “It has been blessed by Sol, my friend. I can feel it. What once carried the stain of the Hellbourne will now bring righteous ruin upon them.”

His blazing white wings flapped, quivering the torchlight and rippling the tent walls.

“I swear to you all, brothers and sisters. This blade serves Sol and no other.”

The Blind Prophet hesitated, then nodded and pushed through the flaps. The Virtues and Disciples followed, including Humility.

He kept one hand on the scabbard and allowed a small smile when he felt the blade stir within.

The Nomad sat alone. Against a tall basaltic rock in the southern Great Waste, surrounded by nothing but the sounds of sand being picked up on the wind, the wanderer sat. His prerogative had come to an end; the blistering days and frosty nights of hunting Sand Wraiths had once and for all eroded him like the rock face against which he rested his weary body. It would have been cathartic had it not been ironic; the very same desert that inspired him to pick up his sword years ago had been the one to weather him, day by tedious day, until his body could take no more. Now, with tattered cape and brittle bones, he rested for the first, and perhaps last, time, knowing his efforts were not in vain, but grieving for the Wraiths that would continue to saunter long after he had become one with the earth. Continue reading The Seven Heavenly Virtues: Diligence→

King Jeraziah had not set eyes upon the former rebel known as Prisoner 945 since he hand-delivered the decree which freed the brute from his years of imprisonment below Adkarna.

This was intentional.

Try as he might to forgive the failed uprising of the Titans Brutavious, Baaracko, and Prisoner 945, the grudge weighed heavily upon his shoulders. That, and he half-suspected the four-armed Titan still wanted to bash his head in with that spiked ball and chain he used to decimate the Hellbourne ranks. So our King had kept his distance.

The agonized entity known only as Torturer finished laying his tools out in preparation for his next guest. He had emptied his chests and racks, examining the blades, spikes, and needle brands to ensure they were sharp when necessary, dull when desired, and always slick with the filth and tears of previous suffering. Some of his victims survived long enough to become infected by the dirty instruments, but none of them lived long enough to die from it.

He wanted all of the tools handy, for his next guest was important indeed. Advance sentries had reported sightings of Jeraziah himself, the ridiculous, self-important King of the Legion. Lord General Maliken had dispatched Tressa the succubus to seduce his only son, lure him deeper into Hellbourne territory and finally to this cave, where his screams would echo as he spilled every truth and secret within his head and heart.

Torturer fondled a heavy set of pliers with sawtooth jaws, imagining how the King’s agony would be embedded in the cold stone, haunting the cave the until the end of days. The ceiling was black with soot from pools of oil burning in crevices along the jagged walls, for this was the Torturer’s favorite workshop outside his Hell’s Keep dungeon. The floor was tacky with blood and viscera which never seemed to dry, instead clotting with the fur and singed hair sometimes pulled out by his guests’ own hands.

He set the pliers down and listened—someone approached. Tressa had taken longer than usual to bring this one in, but with the haughty Jeraziah, he who prided himself on abstinence from all things enjoyable, this was to be expected.

Torturer faced the cave entrance and waited. His first wave of pleasure always came when his guests realized who they would spend the rest of their short lives with. The footsteps drew near, and his guest finally moved into the firelight.

Oddly, Tressa had not taken his weapons or stripped him of his clothing, as she typically did with her victims. The Blind Prophet stepped fully into the cave. The succubus’ compulsion was strong, for he showed no sign of fear or hesitation.

Torturer said, “If only your followers, your sheep, could see you now. Just another man, slave to his base desires.” He lifted an iron wedge meant for splitting firewood that worked even better for spreading ribs until they cracked. “Though if you think your shame is torment enough, you are mistaken.”

“Listening to you prattle on is ample misery,” the Blind Prophet said.

Torturer stopped, uncertainty clouding his ethereal face.

The Blind Prophet drove his bladed staff into the stone floor and pulled a thick, ancient book from his satchel. “I am here to collect you, not entertain you.”

“The…the succubus does not hold you?”

“She holds the light of Sol within her. And because of this, she need hold nothing else.”

Torturer could not remember what fear felt like. What he did know: this Blind Prophet was not here to die in anguish.

He was a threat.

Torturer had no guards or assistants in his cave. His guests were always gravely injured, too weak to fight back, or controlled by daemon magic when they arrived. For his pleasure, he preferred the magic removed once they were bound by his chains—his chains!

Torturer summoned the harrowing links with needle-sharp tips from thin air and drove them toward the Blind Prophet, who shot his arms forward as if he could catch the incoming assault. The cave was bathed in heat and light as blazing phoenixes flew from his palms. They swooped and dove, cutting the chains into glowing fragments that fell to the cave floor and sizzled in the bloody mire. The divine birds circled the Blind Prophet, searching for more threats, before fading into pale sparks.

“On your deathbed,” the Blind Prophet said, “you made a pact with the daemons. Eternal life, you begged. And they gave it, as I can see. An endless life of agony and hate. Tell me: would you accept those terms again?”

Torturer lifted a heavier chain from a hook on the wall. This one would not be sliced by mere bird wings—it had been forged beneath the Scar and tempered with Valkyrie blood.

“Do not bother begging with terms of surrender, priest. I take no prisoners.”

The Blind Prophet’s eyes flared. “I offer you nothing, wraith! I follow the path of Sol, who has brought me here. He has use of you. If he did not, I would leave you a mere heap among your severed chains and be free of this foul pit. Now answer me true. Would you accept the daemon terms again, if they were offered?”

Torturer hesitated. Lord General Maliken had many spies who moved in endless forms. If this were one of them, sent to test his loyalty…but Torturer could sense pain, and this Blind Prophet held more pain within him than any living being he had ever encountered.

No daemon would carry such a burden. It intrigued Torturer, for pain was his trade.

The Blind Prophet asked again, “Would you?”

“No,” Torturer whispered.

The Blind Prophet nodded. “Then Sol was right to send me. The daemons left you with no physical body. They corrupted you into the embodiment of pain, but you feel nothing. You are free of hunger, fear, and cold. Yet when Anubis Pharaoh offered you a corporeal form in his attempt to summon Ra, you embraced the chance. Tell me why.”

“I wanted to feel again,” Torturer said. “Something. Anything.”

“Even pain?”

“Pain is pure,” Torturer said. “It is not clouded by emotion. I envied my victims, for they experienced something I never could. I wanted to feel the pain.”

“Did you?”

Torturer shuddered. “Yes. It was…exquisite.”

The Blind Prophet said, “And the pain within me. You can sense it?”

“Please. Tell me how you hold so much. How you carry it, yet it does not crush you beneath its weight.”

“Unconditional love,” the Blind Prophet said. “Kindness and compassion toward all things, no matter how they treat you. No matter how they respond, if they do at all.”

Torturer dropped the heavy chain. “Kindness?”

“Open your heart to the suffering of all things. Allow it to break, again and again, at their helplessness. Seek them out and lend them succor. Then find those who tread upon them, and offer them your full heart as well. I promise you, this will bring you all the pain you could want, and more.”

“All I want?” Torturer said.

“Even more important, child of Sol, is what else it will bring you.”

Torturer gasped. “Tell me, please.”

“A desire to end the pain.”

“End it?”

“Yes. For everyone, without prejudice or envy.”

“But…if the pain is gone, I won’t feel it anymore.”

The Blind Prophet offered a warm smile. “Child, there are feelings other than pain. This, I promise. Do you wish to experience them?”

“I do,” Torturer said.

The Blind Prophet bowed his head, then read aloud from his book. The flames along the cave walls grew and burned with tongues of yellow and purple.

Torturer’s vaporous body began to harden and become flesh. He screamed and his hands clutched at his armor. “Stop! You’re tearing me to pieces!”

“You are being remade,” the Blind Prophet said. “This is what it feels like to care.”

“I cannot take it!”

The Blind Prophet did not look up from the Grimoire of Power. “If that is true, then you will not. You will die.”

Torturer collapsed to his hands and knees. Knees now made of skin and bone, blood and…nerves. He could feel! Seedlings rose from the crusted gore that coated the bottom of the cave and blossomed into wildflowers, filling the dank cavern with the aroma of life.

The Blind Prophet continued to recite the words of Sol as Torturer’s tainted armor shattered and was replaced by a golden sunburst, iron flower petals, and vines reaching toward the heavens.

When the Blind Prophet was finished he fell to one knee, the Grimoire clapping shut to contain its power. When he lifted his head, the sight before him jolted him to his feet.

“Thank you,” Kindness said. A white-gloved hand flew to her mouth in shock. “Why do I sound like a woman?”

“Because you are one,” the Blind Prophet said. He threw his head back and laughed.

Kindness considered this. She was not upset or judgemental. “Interesting. I wonder why Sol would do this.”

“My child, it was you who chose this form. For reasons known only to you and glorious Sol, this is how you shall redeem yourself.”

Kindness took his hand and pulled him toward the mouth of the cave, careful not to step on any of the fresh young flowers.

The trail of blood was not difficult to follow in the abandoned Legion camp. From one soldier to the next, slain in the line of duty at his outpost, it blotted the ground like a spilled inkwell. They rested peacefully in their chain mail and leather, but unarmed, as if they had not a chance to react, or their movements manipulated to keep them from drawing weapons. Stillness ran rampant; time had no place in this location.

The Blind Prophet stepped over their bodies, pausing briefly to offer them blessings in the afterlife, and continued on his way. He was on a much more important journey than absolving the minor sins of fallen men, for he hunted the very source of this destruction: the monster Chronos, he who dwelt nowhere and, seemingly, at no stationary point in history. The Curse of Ages possessed by a daemonic soul who lived between ticks of the clock on borrowed time.

Chronos, however, was well aware he was being tracked, and had spotted the Blind Prophet as soon as he entered the central camp area. Chronos instantly dashed away to avoid unnecessary confrontation. It was unwise to battle those who did not keep him from his desires, especially mages, who had a tendency to be even trickier than he was. To be sure he was hidden from view, Chronos made another dash to an adjacent side of the camp.

Looking behind, he saw that the Blind Prophet was no further than he had been just seconds ago. Odd, he thought. Chronos dashed again, this time outside the walls of the camp. When he looked back the Blind Prophet was even closer, standing next to the door shattered by Chronos when he stormed the camp. He became confused and enraged. How could a man travel as fast as he? Chronos braced himself, then leapt forward in time, down a dirt path and around a tree, through a small patch of weeds, and finally stopped in a clearing almost a mile from the camp. He turned around rapidly to see nothing but the settling dirt and was relieved.

But as he turned to face forward, he was startled by the vision of the Blind Prophet standing several feet in front of him. It was enough to set him off and, sensing that battle was inevitable, Chronos tightened his grip on his axe. He threw his hand up and cast a large Chronosphere, distorting the time in a large radius around himself, then dashed at the Blind Prophet with bared teeth. Much to his surprise, he became stuck midway through. Had something gone awry? Did this mage possess powers even mightier than his own?

“Patience, my son,” the Blind Prophet whispered. “I must speak to you without interference.”

Chronos struggled to attack, but was unable to move his body. He was frozen in place as time around him continued to advance, only capable of shifting his eyes from one target to another. A sense of panic shot through him immediately. His brain screamed to be released, banging against the walls of his skull, though no one could hear. The Blind Prophet stood across from him and peered calmly into his eyes. Chronos had hardly noticed the thin line of blood that stained the bottom of the Blind Prophet’s robe.

“Those who seek the light of Sol are granted eternal life,” the Blind Prophet said. “The virtuous are allowed a place in his kingdom, so long as they abide by the commandments he has set forth. For as much as Sol is a righteous god, He is also just, and He must judge the souls of men on how well they have used the gift of consciousness. Does a man foul his god-given soul with worldly impurities, reveling in the sins to which he is led by temptation? Or does he strive for goodness, bestowing on his fellow man the glory that has been given to him?

“But because you are born of man, your soul is not your own; you have been imbued with false promises from daemons. When you die, you shall return once more to the earth; your flesh and blood will become part of the soil and your actions lost to time itself, meaningless to those who walked in Sol’s presence before and after your existence. Your words will be erased from the pages of history, blown away like sand in a broken hourglass.

“So, as man is given the freedom to choose, you, Chronos, must also make a choice: a great punishment or a great reward.”

The Blind Prophet held out both of his hands, palms facing the sky. In each, a small mountain of sand began to accumulate, trickling from an invisible source at the top of the Chronosphere: in his left, a pure white sand, as if it fell from heavenly beaches, and in his right, a thick, crumbling black sand, like the residue from a charred flank of meat. The tiny grains piled on top of each other, creating many dense layers that toppled over and collected at the bottom of the pile, supporting the relentless and unstoppable waves.

The Blind Prophet said, “You have been given tremendous power, and have so far used it for your own amusement. You perceive time, but you do not feel its consequences, even as your actions hasten the tragedy of others. You let time build them up, stronger, faster, fostering hardship without care.”

He motioned first to the white sand by tilting his head to the left, then to the pile of black sand: “Do you choose the path of light, upon whose quiet shores the sand sits with tranquility? Or do you choose the path of darkness, whose restless shadows stack, swallowing all?”

Chronos’ eyes, red from his inability to blink, darted from one hand to the other, intermittently stopping on the Blind Prophet’s face in a dire plea to abandon the question, or at least slow the trickling sand. The saliva in his mouth had already evaporated and his joints approached agony from their stiffness in odd positions. The piles of sand had overflowed the Blind Prophet’s hands and covered the floor of the Chronosphere.

“Although,” the Blind Prophet began, “it is imperative you know the price one must pay for a life of sin: your world, all that you have seen and known, will be repeated. I will send you back to the beginning of time. Before Newerth, whose regions have been plagued by strife and betrayal; before the Fall of Man, when science sought to take control of Sol’s natural world. Before the plants and creatures of the land and sea had been conceived; where only Sol and his divine ideas existed.

“To everyone outside of this bubble, it will appear as if nothing happened at all. Life will resume and you will simply disappear when it closes. You will not cease to exist; you will only cease to exist here, for your consciousness will be reborn in Sol’s light. There you will wait for millions of years, in patience and resolution, until this time once again occurs, and I again call you forth to fight beside me.

“So,” the Blind Prophet said. “Which do you choose?”

With every passing second, the fear in Chronos spread. He had been unable to process the excruciating progression of time. He attempted to speak, but nothing came from his mouth. He forced with all his might, straining his larynx, pushing air out of his lungs with such desperation that they trembled, but not even a squeak could be heard. The sand continued to rise.

“Time is wasting, Chronos.”

Minutes passed and the sand swirled in the Chronosphere, whipping against Chronos’ face and body, stinging his skin. It built higher and higher, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not move. Spittle could not materialize to sate the dryness that overtook his tongue and sweat could not surface to show his heightened anguish. His only hope stood across from him, an intangible hand wrapped around his gullet and over each muscle fiber.

When Chronos could no longer tolerate his paralysis, and only a thread of hope remained, the Blind Prophet released him. His legs were still helpless, mired in the dense layers of sand, but his upper body flailed with intensity. He pushed and pounded against the desert beneath his torso with both hands but only buried himself deeper. The Blind Prophet’s gaze was the same, staring through him with blank eyes and a stone face that weathered the insanity echoing from all sides of the Chronosphere. The thread was pulled taut with tension, and Chronos could bear it no longer.

“Life!” he shouted in exasperation. “Life!”

The Blind Prophet closed his hands and the sand stopped trickling. The onslaught halted and the waves seeped into the ground, grain by grain, leaving Chronos shaken and weary on the slowly unfolding dirt floor. The Blind Prophet walked over and extended his hand, helping the brute to his feet. Chronos quickly grabbed his axe, his fidgeting fingers tickling the handle to ensure they could again move by his intention. He focused on the Blind Prophet, whose face now wore a subtle grin.

“Then it is decided.”

The Blind Prophet held his arms out, and Chronos’s blue body was illuminated. The Chronosphere ebbed and flowed, distorting the space around it once more. Nearby rocks and bushes stretched, their particles altered through the perversion of time. It rumbled, then shrank, until it was nothing, leaving behind only a few misshapen atoms.

A familiar hum of power coursed through the Grimoire. Envy swiftly moved across the battlefield and knew that the next vessel was not far off.

“Can it possibly be this easy? This obvious?” thought Envy as he looked across the scarred landscape.

At the edge of the battlefield sat the corpulent composite creature of chaos known as Devourer. The patchwork demon was the most ravenous creature that the human magi had ever summoned in their wars against the beasts and the monstrosity was known for consuming every creature it was able to get it’s hook into. The creatures it didn’t finish were simply added to his patchwork body.

Envy strode confidently towards the demon, the now comforting power of the Grimoire clutched tightly in his hand. As he neared, the Devourer looked up from the corpse he was gnawing on, distracted by the immense power that was so close and he knew that he must have it. The Devourer lashed out with his hook and wrapped it around the creature holding the powerful relic and tried to reel it back in to be consumed but it did not move. Continue reading The Seven Deadly Sins – Gluttony→